Irish Chain for Mom

When I first started getting into quilting, I bought my first quilt book "Scrap Quilts" by Leisure Arts. In it was this pink and green Irish Chain that I knew immediately I wanted to make for my mom. Fast forward many years to about 18 months ago. It was to be her Mother's Day gift for 2010, but I soon realized that was not going to happen. Nor was her birthday in October or Christmas. However, it was on schedule for Mother's Day 2011. I fought with this quilt every step of the way, it seemed. The strips weren't all the same width, I cut some sets too short, the green fabric was too stiff, I ran out of fabric and on and on. But finally the top was ready to be quilted. My aunt has a long-arm quilting machine and off I went to finish it up. Well......I made a mistake on the backing and had to redo it, the machine was tempermental and after fighting breaking threads every 10 inches, I finally decided to take it off the machine and pick out the stitching. This took SEVERAL hours. I bought different thread and tried again. This time the whole machine went kaput. The timing was broken. It would take a month to repair. My aunt says, "They say you should name all of your quilts." This one will have to wait - it wouldn't be a good name at this point. Finally in July, I finished the quilt and proudly gave it to my mom. In spite of this quilt having a mind of it's own, I really do like how it turned out.

So what did I learn from this project? Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, especially when the blocks are soooo tiny.

T-Shirt Quilt for Pat

This was a fun quilt I made for my husband. He has quite a collection of t-shirts from things he's passionate about -darts, basketball, weightlifting, running- and instead of tossing all the very worn ones, I made them into a quilt. My one regret? I wish I'd thought to do this years ago when he still had shirts from all the races he's done like Bay to Breakers and little 5K's from over the years. I couldn't bring myself to cut up his marathon shirt, so I scanned it into the computer and used transfer paper to iron it onto white fabric. The bonus of that was, I could enlarge it a bit. I totally lucked out and found the PERFECT backing fabric for this - dart boards on flannel!

Applique Pillows

My first attempt at applique. These are from a quilt pattern called Aunt Millie's Garden. Someday I will make that quilt, but for now, I'm taking each block and making it by itself for practice. They make great pillow covers! I used wonder under and stitched over the raw edges of the applique pieces. I found it to be fun and relaxing. It's like kindergarten - cut, draw, color - all with my favorite medium of FABRIC!

Radical Rooster

I love roosters and this applique wall-hanging was quite fun. I just used scraps I had on in my scrap box and then tried my hand at using thread to add details to the rooster and the border. You can see some of it in the wing and border close-up photos. I even found some fabric for the border that looks like old barn wood. This ended up being a Christmas gift for my daughter's respite provider. Some day I'd like to make him in black and white prints.

Baby quilt for my good friend Tamara

This was a group project that I did for a very good friend and her baby #3. Several ladies each made a block and then I put them all together into a quilt. This was also my first long arm quilting project and I am hooked! The challenge in this project was finding a fabric to unify all the very different blocks and figuring out how to make them look the same size. My ruler was indispensible!

Log Cabin for Dad

This is a quilt I made for my dad a couple Christmas's ago. It's a log cabin pattern and I used flannel on the back, because he always wears flannel shirts. I even remembered to add a label - something I often forget!

Elephant Wallhanging

I made this wall hanging for my daughter's physical therapist as a thank you for all she has done for us. She likes elephants and I'd been wanting to try this project - so it worked out perfectly. It was the first time I have used embellishments and although I was a bit intimidated, I did enjoy it and learned a few things. That's my goal with every project - learn at least one new thing.